Righteous Among the Nations - A Monthly Story

Jerzy Bialecki was a young Polish boy aged 17 when he tried to escape to Hungary from occupied Poland in 1940. He was caught by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz as prisoner No. 243. In autumn1943, after 3 years of forced labor, he met Tzila Cybulska from Łomża in the Białystok area. She was a female inmate at Auschwitz and she, too, was sent to perform forced labor. Białecki and Cybulska became friends and would meet secretly as it was strictly forbidden for male and female prisoners to get together. In the beginning of 1944, Białecki and Cybulska planned to escape from the camp together with a Polish friend and another female Jewish prisoner. For unknown reasons, they abandoned their plans, but in the summer of 1944 Bialecki turned up at the entrance of Cybulska’s block in Auschwitz. He was wearing an SS uniform that he had smuggled out of a German warehouse. He called out the number she had tattooed on her arm and walked her out of the camp in the same way as real SS soldiers would. This was one of the boldest escapes from the camp ever. They kept moving eastward, mostly at night, through forests and fields. Very quickly, they ran out of food, their clothes were soaking wet and Cybulska was exhausted. She begged Jerzy to leave her and save himself but he refused and moved on carrying her on his shoulders. This went on for several days until they reached the village of Muniakowice in the Kielce area. They found shelter in the house of one of Bialecki’s relatives. When Bialecki recovered from the hardships of the journey, he joined a unit of partisans of the Home Army and she was taken to another village where she was hidden by a family of peasants by the name of Czernik who took care of her until the liberation. After the war, Cybulska emigrated to the United States. In 1983, she returned to Poland and met her savior, Jerzy Białecki, again. On June 27, 1985, Yad Vashem awarded Jerzy Białecki the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

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In order to present the contemporary Polish culture, the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv initiates and supports various events in all areas of education and the arts; Cinema, visual arts, music, design, dance and theater. Since 2000, the Polish Institute has been an enthusiastic partner to Israel’s leading cultural institutions. Initiates workshops, professional tours and encounters between Israeli and Polish creators, in order to facilitate a multi-cultural dialogue and to bring the two societies closer together. In addition, the Polish Institute offers Polish language courses, and an active library for books and films from Poland.